The News
The White House is willing to entertain more changes to its immigration enforcement as a partial government shutdown draws closer. Senate Democrats are still playing hardball.
The Senate Democratic minority is almost fully united around forcing Republicans to drop Department of Homeland Security funding from a government spending package ahead of Friday’s deadline.
Despite GOP entreaties to negotiate with the White House — which is offering executive actions instead of legislative restrictions on immigration enforcement — Democrats aren’t budging, putting Washington on course for yet another shutdown.
“There’s a united, concerted belief that what we need to do is take off five of the [government funding] bills, get them passed,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told Semafor of her party’s approach.
“There’s 100% agreement on those; we can do it. We can do it easily. And then have a path forward to put some reforms into DHS,” Murray added.
Neither the White House nor Senate Republicans have overtly ruled out Democrats’ demand to break apart the six-bill funding package to remove DHS. During the fall shutdown over health care, Republicans told Democrats to pass their bill or pound sand. This time, a senior White House official told Semafor that they’re “eager to work to try to deescalate” and “get the bills moving forward again.”
Asked if the White House opposes splitting up the bills, a second White House official dismissed Democratic demands for DHS changes as unreasonable rather than addressing that question. The official told Semafor that “a demand for agreement on legislative reforms as a condition of funding the Department of Homeland Security with a government funding deadline just 48 hours away is a demand for a partial government shutdown.”
“This bipartisan appropriations package, which the Democrats agreed to and have now walked away from, has been under negotiation for more than a month. The White House urges congressional Democrats not to subject the country to another debilitating government shutdown,” the official added.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is prodding Democrats to talk to the White House, which says it maintains some flexibility over how to enforce deportation orders and is willing to talk with Congress. The White House has already restructured its command in Minnesota after federal agents killed Alex Pretti, the second US citizen fatally shot in the area in recent weeks.
The first senior White House official told Semafor that what Trump has already done isn’t “the outer limit of potential de-escalatory steps that the administration might consider to be possible.” Still, the first official said passing the entire funding package is “the best way to avoid a government shutdown.”
Democrats have rebuffed negotiating with the White House directly until the spending package is altered. Murray scoffed at the need for the House to approve any new changes by Friday in order to keep the government open.
And she said the potential lapse in funding for other DHS agencies should spur a quicker negotiation on immigration: “Obviously that’s our incentive to get those reforms agreed upon with the Republicans and get that bill out of here.”
“On DHS reform, the White House and relevant agencies are going to say what they approve, what they can do, and how long would it take them to do it,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said. But “the longer the Rs don’t split the bills and send the five [to the White House], the longer it takes to start the meaningful discussion about DHS.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out his members’ demands for the DHS bill on Wednesday: Stronger warrant requirements for immigration enforcements, an end to roving patrols, body camera requirements, a ban on mask-wearing by enforcement officers, and clear rules around the use of force.
Negotiating a bill around that with Republicans would be a lengthy and difficult process. But the White House could conceivably institute some of those changes more quickly.
Know More
The current standoff could end in any number of ways; most of them would probably result in at least a short partial shutdown unless Democrats approve the spending package without changes.
If Senate Democrats get what they want, the House would need to vote again on whatever the upper chamber passes — a possibility the administration seems wary of, with the senior official arguing the package has “a very uncertain path if it returns back to the House.”
Unless the House changes its schedule, their members also won’t return to Washington until next week.
The Senate could pass a stopgap bill for DHS or the whole government to buy time, but that would also require the House to act. And if Trump and Republicans ultimately decline to entertain Democrats’ demands to split apart the bills, a longer shutdown could set in.
“We’re running up against the deadline. And you’re injecting a lot of uncertainty into the equation here by not moving the package as drafted with the input of the Democrats. This is a very carefully constructed package, as demonstrated by the big vote of the House,” Thune said.
Still, he said on Wednesday afternoon his conference is reserving “optionality” to potentially fund most of the government and leave out the DHS bill. The senior White House official argued that the funding package is bipartisan and “not primarily an immigration enforcement bill.”
“It’s a bill that funds FEMA, it funds TSA, it funds the Coast Guard,” the official said. “These are all sort of nonpartisan agencies that we would hope would be able to move forward without subjecting Americans to a damaging and debilitating government shutdown.”
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said he’d “prefer not to” remove the DHS aspect but also declined to entirely rule it out.
“We are looking at all options. But the House is not here and does not want to take up these bills again,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine. “The White House has endorsed all of these bills. I think that’s important to know.”
Room for Disagreement
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said the president can take several actions to make a deal with Democrats more palatable. He and other members of both parties also want Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gone, for example.
“The president can play a constructive role here by taking ICE out of Minneapolis and also by asserting his total commitment to an independent investigation,” Welch said.
“I also think it’d be really helpful if Noem, one, did what she should do. I can see why the President wants to stand by his person, but leadership here has been terrible,” he added.
Burgess and Shelby’s View
This shutdown fight is very different from the last one over health care: That one took weeks to set up. This one was launched less than a day after Pretti died.
Democrats are showing zero flexibility, despite Republicans’ hopes to work with them without changing the legislative package. And the big surprise this time is that Republicans aren’t yet saying “absolutely not.”
There’s 48 hours left to figure it out, and that’s a long time in DC.
Notable
- Some rank-and-file Democrats rejected a White House meeting on Wednesday, CNN reports.